Reason 1 to Give Big – Wonka wonka wonka

We’re counting the hours to the opening curtain for the spring extravaganza, Willy Wonka Jr. staring an energetic, talented, and fabulously adorable cast of students from our musical theater program. It’s a sweet, fun, happy production that just might be the perfect elixir to whatever was gnawing on you this week.

Reason 2 to Give Big – Cinco de Amazing

And while we’re talking about energy and talent, let’s talk one last time about the upcoming Cinco de Mayo fiesta in our building on, wait for it, Sunday, May 5th.

In case you’ve somehow missed it, Island treasure Nidia Sahagun will be hosting a one-hour show filled with performances from our Baile Folklorico dance group and festive music from Seattle’s very own (and very fine) Mariachi de Guadalajara band. The students will showcase traditional dances in vibrant and colorful costumes representing different states in Mexico.

Afterwards, the party will continue in the atrium with the band, food, dancing, and fun.

Two of the people helping make this fiesta possible are the good folks at Niece Pumping (the folks with the bright red trucks), Julie and Mark Romero. I caught up with Julie the other day, and I think their family story speaks volumes about what we’re doing with our dance program.

Me: You told me a little bit about your family history the other day. Say somethings about Mark’s roots in New Mexico?

Julie: Mark’s family traces back to colonial New Mexico, really to the first explorations by the Spanish. A simple way of explaining a long history is to simply say that if you know the stories of the doll Josefina from the American Girls doll company, that is very much our children’s heritage. It is difficult to find ways to tie our girls to our family’s history when you live outside of that culture and away from those familial things. Dance is a fantastic way to do that, it conveys so much.

Me: What brought you to Vashon?

Julie: I have loved the island for a long time, having ties to the island through my Great Aunt Louise Ogilvy. I brought my husband out to visit after she passed in the mid 2000s, and we both fell in live with the island. It took us a few years to find a way to move here. It wasn’t until the summer of 2013 that we found Niece Pumping Service was for sale and quickly realized that it fit our skill sets and that it was the right fit for our family. We officially purchased Niece Pumping from Larry Niece & moved to Vashon in January 2014…and were finally in the place we felt was home.

Me: Your family has a past connection to Folklorico programs? Tell us about that?

Julie: Our oldest daughter danced Folklorico in Pueblo, Colorado for several years, where the program also included the colonial New Mexico dances along with those from the different regions of Mexico…we loved it for her and it was something we valued for our younger daughter but didn’t expect to have available for her when we moved here when she was just 4.

Me: What drew you to our Baile Folklorico program?

Julie: It is a program that gives children a chance to experience another culture in a very interactive and hands on way. For that space in time, they are really fully immersed in that culture.

When you are of Hispanic descent but not tied to that culture, it’s hard to find those opportunities.

It’s also incredibly valuable in a place like our beautiful island that has a high enough Latino population that our schools look at that when hiring our grade school principal, for example, that we provide experiences for those children which are part of their culture and opportunities for their friends and school mates to experience that with them. It’s a fantastic representation of a beautiful culture as well as being beautiful in and of itself.

The fun begins at 2:00 on May 5th. And thanks to the folks at Niece Pumping (and a gift from another donor), tickets are a very modest $5. There will be no happier place on Vashon that day and time than here!

Reason 3 to Give Big – Student art gone wild

Our galleries are awash with the work of student artists (for the second straight month).

Vashon High School Biennial Art Show

Every two years, VCA turns over a big chunk of its gallery space to showcase the Vashon High School Biennial Art Show. The latest edition of the show opens Friday, May 3rd at 6:00pm.

A beloved tradition for 25 years featuring over 110 students, ranging from freshman to senior, including advanced placement art students, are participating. The art includes ceramics, drawing and painting (watercolor, acrylic, ink, graphite pencil) and printmaking from art classes taught by Kristen Dallum. Kate Dunagan’s advanced jewelry making students are showing their hand-crafted pendants, earrings, and rings. Photographers in James Culbertson’s class are displaying a sample of their work.

Says Kristen Dallum, “From my perspective I’m embracing the show as an opportunity to showcase the creativity and diversity of perspectives from our students – celebrating their enthusiasm for creating and ability to enjoy the process, their capacity for collaborating with one another, and their astute ability to create culturally responsive works that illustrate their values and ideals.”

Says Kate Dunagan, “I see transferable skills developed in jewelry making. Beside teaching students how to handle industrial tools, such as polishing wheels and casting torches, they learn problem solving skills. For every project, nothing is perfect or goes as planned. The student is constantly innovating, striving to solve the next curve in the road as it comes up. Plus, they take something out of their imagination, put it onto paper and then into a wearable piece of art – beautiful jewelry for themselves, their mom, dad, girlfriend.”

A group of 10 StudentLink artists began meeting weekly to make art, support each other’s creativity and share stories about how art makes a difference in the world.

The original plan was to learn from one professional teaching artist per month at the Blue Heron Education Center and to spend the remaining weeks working on a project in that month’s medium.

Once the students began working with the artists at Blue Heron, something shifted, namely an awakening to the possibility of students teaching one another. The circle revised the schedule for the remainder of the year, alternating professional artist workshops with student-led workshops.

Reason 4 to Give Big – “3 Women Artists” is a showcase of astonishing work

“We’re excited about the diversity of expression in this month’s collection featuring the work by Vashonite Cyra Jane, Lynette Chambers from Olympia, and Heather Goodwind from Portland in our Koch Gallery,” says Gallery Business Manager Lynann Politte.

Lynette Charters, “Missing Women” exhibition’s aim is to use the numerous images of women’s bodies, which are historically exhibited in paintings by mostly male partners, to highlight how underrepresented women artists are in history. (mixed media on board)

Heather Goodwind describes her work as “a slow reckoning of self-awareness drawn out in a series of improvised narratives.” She uses paint, ink, and graphite to create a personal anthology of archetypal images which she presents as a permanent record of her experience. She has received grants from the Pollock-Krasner Foundation and the the Ford Family Foundation, has attended residencies at Playa Summer Lake and Leland Iron Works, and her works are in the permanent collection of the Art In Embassies program at the U.S. Consulate in Monterrey, Mexico.

Cyra Jane brings us a collection of sculptures using a variety of stone (marble, chlorite) and steel. With these carvings, she dives deep, mapping content through the meditative practice of the art and reaction patterns on topics like the release of anger and the embrace of the self. (stone carvings). Almost all the sculptures in Cyra’s exhibition have been carved here on Vashon at her studio.

The show opens Friday, May 3rd at 6:00 PM at Vashon Center for the Arts.

6 – Finally, and this is a sixth thing

Continuing my current run of thought-starting six items . . . multiple times in the past month or so, someone has stuck in front of me a well-known segment from a speech Teddy Roosevelt made at the Sorbonne in Paris in 1910 called “Citizenship in a Republic.”

It goes like this:

It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.

Most recently the quote was brought back to my attention but author / speaker / researcher Brene Brown. As much as I have railed lately against Netflix, I have to confess that I thought her special called, “Call to Courage,” was incredibly inspiring. This much shorter TED talk on the subject of vulnerability will give you a flavor. Worth 18 minutes of your time.

In a conversation with my brother not long after, I mentioned watching Ms. Brown to which he asked, “Have you seen Free Solo?” What?

So, I watched that video too. It’s a stunning (and I think that is a barely adequate word) story about a young man named Alex Honnold and his successful attempt to free climb El Capitan in Yosemite valley. If the term “free climb” doesn’t ring a bell, that means without ropes or anchors. If “El Capitan” isn’t making you quake, it’s one of the most iconic climbing walls in the world, jutting 3,000 feet from the valley floor.

To put that in perspective, the Columbia Center tower in Seattle, all 76 floors of it, rises just 933 feet. So, three of those and then some more.

Here’s the movie trailer. Even knowing that he accomplished this crazy task doesn’t make it any less palm sweating.

And then check out this “360 degree” view of the climb. Once you launch it, use your computer mouse to grab the screen and change the view. It will give you vertigo.

Why “Fish Wrap”? Years ago, living in San Francisco, I became a devotee of a legendary journalists named Herb Caen. While he may not have been the first to use the phrase in connection with “yesterday’s news,” he is the one I remember. Today’s news is tomorrow’s fish wrap. Maybe it’s a generational thing. At any rate, we call our Friday wrap up, The Friday Fish Wrap . . . Five things worth knowing about VCA this Friday.

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